


kiss the pain away to your radio

by cyanica



Series: maybe i just took too much cough medicine [whumptober 2020] [12]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety Attacks, Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Bucky Barnes Has PTSD, Bucky Barnes Has Panic Attacks, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Dissociation, Emetophobia, Flashbacks, Hurt Bucky Barnes, Hurt/Comfort, Illnesses, Lullabies, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Panic Attacks, Past Torture, Phobias, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Steve Rogers, Psychological Trauma, Sick Bucky Barnes, Sickfic, Stomach Ache, Vomiting, Whump, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:46:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27176080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyanica/pseuds/cyanica
Summary: “I'm scared,” he admitted into the safety of Steve's warmth while Steve gently eased away the shaking tremblings from the intangible, fading needles against his flesh and the rotting ache devouring his insides.Or Bucky has emetophobia, and being sick has proven to be a terrifying, traumatic ordeal – while Steve is just trying to help.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: maybe i just took too much cough medicine [whumptober 2020] [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947775
Comments: 4
Kudos: 72
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	kiss the pain away to your radio

**Author's Note:**

> whumptober prompt day 18: panic attacks, phobias.
> 
> title from ‘backseat serenade’ – all time low

“Buck, it’s alright, it’s okay.” He heard the distant, cotton-like words crash like abstract waves into his shivering body, piercing through the needle-like sensation burning each raw, unnerved sensor underneath his bloodless skin. 

Steve’s hand was intangible, unreal against the pale heat of his arching spine, stroking up and down, up and down to calm the violent, shaking heaves that Bucky’s body contorted with as it lay pressed between the ceramic bathtub and the toilet.

The tiles felt chilling – icy and freezing against the shivering flesh of his legs and torso, slowly freezing him down to the core, consuming his undead flesh entirely and eternally frostbitten. The feeling of his fevered skin burn like frozen ice made wetness salivate through his mouth, bile creep up his throat and threaten to spill out in violent retches that assaulted his sense of smell, polluting and contaminating it through with the stench of diseased infection and rot, just as his arm had smelled like in the searing white ice.

He was choking on it. The smell of rotting plague and the frostbitten snow dug into his skin and tissue and bone marrow like infectious needles injecting acidic, poisonous toxins that caused his stomach to convulse in on itself. 

The organ was rotting from inside him, screaming to erupt itself through his mouth and bleed from the ofracies of his body that contained it. Thousands of aching, agonising twists and knots pulse through it as if he’d swallowed nothing but pure shards of glass and broken needles and fragmented bones that carved up his organs into bloodied ribbons as they made their way up his mangled throat.

“I – I can’t,” Bucky gritted out, clenching his teeth with enough forces that they ground together, and the words sounded intertwined with a sob. His body ached to release the contains of his stomach in violent, uncontrollably heaves, and Bucky wasn’t sure how he had a hope of suppressing them at this point. The urge to vomit was overwhelming – entrapping. “I can’t s-stop it.”

“You don’t need to.” Steve whispered gently, keeping his hand on Bucky’s arching, trembling back as his lover gagged against the cool tiles, pressing his pounding head against the edge of the toilet and wrapping his metallic arm so tightly around his convulsing stomach as if to rip it out entirely. “It’s okay, I’m right here. You can let it out. It’s okay.”

“No,” Bucky moaned, a low guttural pain searing from his stomach as the contained ache threatened to expel itself from his insides. With his human, flesh arm now also constricting around his stomach, he tried to press into it, soothing it from the outside, begging is body to keep from throwing up, but the pain searing white-hot flame throughout his abdomen and the undeniable strength of the need to get whatever was inside him had Bucky clenching his eyes until snowflakes burned behind his lids.

Snowflakes. A fall. Blood painting ice. An indefinite sky that bled of its light. An infinite nebulae of starless decades where he lost himself, became something new, and they relished as their weaponise inhuman asset choked on tubes, swallowed toxic acid and glass and needles, and then licked his own vomit from the ground at their feet – _if you’re really that hungry_ , they said, _then you’d eat it._

“No, please,” Bucky moaned against the vivid memories, writhing against Steve’s gentle touch as the past replayed like an old picture film he’d used to watch before it all – perhaps even a flicking nickelodeon that always burned in and out of his vision like an ember, but never truly extinguished the flame completely.

“Buck, it’s okay. You’re just sick.” Steve said again, piercing through the agony of his memories and existing like an anchor that kept him from drowning too deep. He said the words so intoxicatingly soothingly that they sounded as if they were a relic from a distant, more sweeter and simpler past, and Bucky wanted to believe him. “Do you remember when I was like this – sick to my stomach every flu season, and you would sit beside me in the bathroom at three in the morning and hum the song from the Wizard of Oz?”

Bucky thinks that he did, that he remembered chimney tops and little blue birds and _“don’t touch me, you’ll get sick,”_ and _“then you can take care of me”._

It was something to focus on, something else to hold onto, rather than reliving in the rot and agony and isolation of a different time. Steve was the constant Bucky used to free himself of that pain, both from the beyond and solidifying reality, so much so, that Bucky believed him. It was always Steve.

“Steve,” he mumbled, loosening the hands around his abdomen and letting himself melted into Steve’s warm, tangible body beside him, where his fingers continued to lace up and down, up and down Bucky’s relaxing spine like the stream of a boundless river that cooled his skin and drowned away the snowflakes.

“I’m right here, you’re alright. You can let it out, it’s all okay. You’re safe.” Steve murmured in a breath barely above a whisper, melting through Bucky’s flesh like clouds of fresh oxygen and the warmth of falling in love.

“‘M scared,” he admitted into the safety of his lover’s hold, and Steve gently eased away the shaking tremblings from the intangible, fading needles against his flesh and the rotting ache devouring his insides.

“I know, but you’re safe with me. I’m not gonna let anything happen to you. I just want you to feel better.” Steve replied and the words lightly reminded Bucky of a tuneless lullaby from the depth of his past – from before the end of it all – and he was suddenly reminded of feverishly lips, midnight aches and the warmth of another’s flesh – and yet he had never felt such familiar security, protection – _safety_ – for so, so long...

His body relaxed, and he gave in to his body’s needs. The bowl wasn’t filled with broken needles or shattered glass or exploded batteries when he pulled away, and when it was over, the irrational, obtrusive thought that someone would make him eat his own sick had faded like the ephemeral snowflakes melting against the warm familiarity.

Bucky leaned back into Steve, his trembles and the dulling internal ache fading with the darkness as sun bled over the horizon into illuminating dawn, and Steve was humming whispers of _blue skies_ and _rainbows._


End file.
